https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t Padlet for the session on June 24 en-us 2021-06-21 07:53:37 UTC 2025-12-28 04:53:59 UTC hello@padlet.com dnetz1 https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617259526 When properly read, this should be a very provocative text to any environmental sociologist. Why`? Well, it's on you to find out. When you read it, think about why it is provocative, to whom, and what those whom they are directed at might want to reply to the provocations. 

For instance, it starts with an initial assertion that many readers will find pretty surprising: Namely, that "the paradigm of sustainability is widely regarded as exhausted". How can this be the case? Isn't the rhetoric of "sustainability" more central to politics today than it ever was? Try to understand why the author thinks that the paradigm is exhausted, in what sense he regards it as such, and what this means for the further argument. More generally, how is the current societal and political situation around environmental and climate issues described by the author? Can you follow him in making his arguments around this? Do you agree with him, or in what ways do you disagree? 

A second, bigger provocation is behind the notion of "discourses of hope" that the author uses to address a number of recent 'critical' debates which he regards as problematic or even misguided. Which are those, why does he call them "discourses of hope", and what does he intend to say by calling them so?

Another thing to watch for is the way the author discusses theories and ideas from environmental sociology, and the way he positions his own arguments in relation to them. The article is clearly meant as a contribution to environmental sociology, and it draws on and/or criticizes several of the theories we have been discussing this semester. This is particularly obvious in sections 2 and 4, but the engagement with environmental sociology runs from the introduction to the conlusion. Try to reconstruct this for yourself!

What you might also find challenging is that the authors uses many terms coined by himself and intended to address or describe things that environmental sociology so far hasn't developed a language for. For instance, "post-ecologism", the "politics and governance of unsustainability" or the notion of "simulation" are such terms. Try to identify these notions coined by the author and to figure out what each of them means (and what it refers to that environmental sociology hasn't seen so far). Coem to speak of it, the very notion of "unsustainability" is probably the most important one of these terms. Can you determine what "unsustainability" is supposed to be? What does it refer to, why does it exist and who or what is responsible?

In the end, it may be a good idea to reflect a bit on what you or we may take away from this argument. How do you feel after having read this, and why? What may such a style of argument do to the motivations of environmental sociologists and climate/eco-activists? Is this a good or a bad thing - or perhaps a good one for one of these groups and a bad one for the other? Beyond emotional reactions to the arguments, what can and should be learned from them, and whose task is it to learn those lessons?]]> 2021-06-21 07:56:56 UTC https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617259526 dnetz1 https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617414914 Here's a short video of the author...]]> 2021-06-21 10:15:01 UTC https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617414914 dnetz1 https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617416397 There's a recent (2021) book in which Blühdorn and his colleagues present their sociology of unsustainability in greater detail (and in German). From inside the university, you can download it here:]]> 2021-06-21 10:16:30 UTC https://padlet.com/dnetz1/jamb1i9hjtrya04t/wish/1617416397